UK Government gives green light to three person IVF

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2013-06-28 Vatican Radio

(Vatican Radio) Britain may allow a controversial technique to create babies using DNA from three people.The country's top medical officer says the move would help couples avoid passing on rare genetic diseases. But opponents say the procedure is unethical.

Josephine Quintavalle from the UK based group Comment on Reproductive Ethics gave her reaction saying, “The United Kingdom is on its own with these developments, the rest of the world is not in favour of what they’re doing…”

She adds, what I can’t accept at all is that it is being sold as a cure for mitochondrial disease, it’s not curing the disease”.

About one in 200 children is born every year in Britain with a mitochondrial disorder.

British law forbids altering a human egg or an embryo before transferring it into a woman, so such treatments are currently only allowed for research.

The government says it plans to publish draft guidelines later this year before introducing a final version to be debated in the U.K. Parliament next year.

Politicians would need to approve the use of the new techniques before patients could be treated. Listen to Lydia O’Kane’s interview with Josephine Quintavalle